Embers of Destruction

by J. Scott Savage

  “That can’t be right,” Clyde said.

  “No mistake,” the driver said.

  Still sure they were at the wrong place, Trenton followed Clyde and Angus up the porch to the front door. Feeling like an intruder, he pushed the door open. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  Simoni poked her head out of a door at the top of the stairs. “Plucky, Kallista,” she called. “The boys are here.”

  Plucky and Simoni ran out of their rooms.

  “Allie and me has our own room,” Plucky called, happily holding her squirming, white-and-brown cat to her chest.

  Kallista came out a moment later, a deep vertical line running down the center of her forehead.

  “How are you?” Trenton asked.

  She tried to smile but failed. Tears leaked from the corners of her downcast eyes.

  They walked into a sunny kitchen where a polished wooden table was set with six plates and platters of eggs, bacon, and buttered toast.

  “Look at this kitchen,” Clyde said, giving a low whistle of appreciation.

  Angus sniffed the bacon and stuck a piece in his mouth. “Where did this come from?”

  “Didn’t think Clyde was the only one who could cook, did’ja?” Plucky asked.

  A beautiful brass telescope stood in front of one of the windows.

  “Look at that view,” Simoni marveled, staring out to where the ocean crashed against a rocky beach.

  Trenton dropped into a seat at the end of the table. He hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before, but he knew if he put anything in his mouth right now he’d choke on it. “This is wrong.”

  Plucky broke off a piece of bacon and fed it to the kitten in her lap. “Feels like a rusty dawb, it does.”

  “A what?” Clyde asked, taking a piece of toast from the platter.

  “A bribe,” Plucky said. “A sop, greased palm, yeah, yeah?”

  “For what?” Simoni asked.

  Trenton drummed his fingers on the table. “Kallista’s father said we could get better jobs and move out of the dorms. Do you think he could have arranged this?”

  Simoni nodded. “There was an envelope on each of our beds upstairs. You’ll probably find new assignments on yours as well.”

  Angus filled his plate until the food threatened to overflow the edges. “If Kallista’s father wants to give us better food and better jobs, who am I to say no? Not like he left us a lot of choice.”

  Trenton shook his head. “If we were moved to a better location in the dorm, maybe given an extra change of clothes or a better work shift, I could accept that. But look at this place. Leo’s been here, what—a few weeks longer than us? Do you really think he has that kind of clout?”

  “If he didn’t do this for us, who did?” Clyde asked.

  Trenton looked at Kallista sitting on the other side of the table, her eyes locked on the empty plate in front of her. “What if it’s not a bribe?” he said, his thoughts slowly coming together. “What if it’s a distraction?”

  For the first time Kallista looked up. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not sure. Back in the tower, the monarch seemed awfully interested in your father. What if he’s doing something for the dragons? Something they don’t want us interfering with?”

  Kallista pressed her hands to the sides of her head. “He wouldn’t do something like that.”

  Angus stopped eating. “Really? You heard him. You think there’s anything he wouldn’t do for the dragons?”

  Kallista squeezed her mouth shut, and for a moment, Trenton thought she was going to cry. Then she lifted her chin. “Maybe he was right. Maybe we should just accept everything.” She waved her hands. “Is this really all so terrible?”

  Trenton couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You want to accept that fact that we’d all be servants to the dragons?”

  Kallista shook her head, her eyes glistening. “I don’t know!” she shouted. “All right? I just don’t know.” With that, she jumped up from the table and ran out of the room.

  Kallista was lying on a bed large enough to sleep three, her face buried in her arms, when she heard a knock at the door.

  “Go away,” she called without looking up.

  The knock came again.

  “I said, go away!”

  The door swung open, and she sat up. “Don’t you listen?”

  “Not very well,” Trenton said, standing just outside her room. “I thought that was one of the things you liked about me.”

  “It’s one of the things I hate about you.”

  “Right. I keep getting those mixed up.”

  “I know why you’re here,” Kallista said, wiping her eyes. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I know you don’t,” Trenton said. “But I think I need to hear what you have to say.”

  She was sure her eyes were bright red. She hated to cry worse than almost anything. “Since when do you listen to me?”

  Trenton leaned against the doorjamb. “Remember that time in Seattle when I volunteered to take part in the joust? I about got my head knocked off. Then you tricked the guy with the bolt in his ear and coldcocked him.”

  “Weasel,” Kallista said. “His name was Weasel.” She couldn’t help smiling at the memory. “What’s your point?”

  “No point,” Trenton said. “I just thought that story would cheer you up. Now will you come talk to me?”

  Kallista swung her legs over the side of the bed. “You’re a jerk.” She climbed down and followed him to the staircase where they sat side-by-side on a dark wooden step.

  “I’m sorry,” Trenton said. “I didn’t have any right to talk about your father.”

  “You had every right.” She clasped her hands in her lap and looked at the ragged edges of her thumbnails. When had she started biting them again? She hadn’t done that since she was seven or eight. She thought maybe her father had put some nasty-­tasting solution on them to break her of the habit, but she couldn’t remember.

  She raised her thumb to her mouth, realized what she was doing, and pulled it away. “I spent all last night replaying what happened in the warehouse over and over in my head. I’ve thought about it so many times I can repeat every word he said. Do you want to hear it?”

  “I heard what your father thinks,” Trenton said. “I want to hear what you think.”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know what I think. Do you ever hear yourself talking and realize you’re repeating word-for-word something your father told you?”

  Trenton laughed. “Just the opposite. For years, my mother would tell me how bad technology was, so, of course, I’d think the exact opposite. I wonder sometimes if the reason I grew up determined to be a mechanic is because she was so against it. How crazy is that? To spend your whole life trying to prove your mother wrong.”

  Kallista shook her head. “No crazier than spending your whole life trying to prove your father right.”

  “So is he?” Trenton asked. “Is your father right?”

  Kallista could hear the murmur of voices coming from the kitchen downstairs. Were the others talking about her? “Last night I was positive he wasn’t. But something occurred to me this morning. What if there’s nothing to fight for anymore?”

  Trenton opened his mouth, but she held up her hand. “I’m not talking about quitting. If there’s something to fight for, I’ll fight. Only . . . were the people in Seattle happier there than they are now?”

  “They were free.”

  “Right. But free to do what? Starve? Fight for who got the best hole in the ground? What did their freedom buy them? The Whipjacks hated the dragons. The Order of the Beast served the dragons, only without all the benefits they have here. And the people in the middle tried not to get trampled by either one. I talked to some of the people in the dorms, and not one of them wanted to go b
ack. Have you actually met anyone who’s unhappy—other than the Runt Patrol?”

  “Well, there was this guy who worked in the fields with us. But I don’t think he was unhappy. He just liked to beat people up.”

  Kallista snickered. “Sounds like Angus.”

  Trenton grinned. “It kind of does.” Then he turned serious. “What about our friends and families back home? Are we supposed to turn our backs on them?”

  “Absolutely not. But you heard what my father said. There are some good things about this place. Maybe it would be okay if our friends and families came here, too.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. Your family is already here.”

  “Yes, my father is here. And look how much he’s been able to help us.” She waved her hands at the lush carpet, the polished stairs, the grandfather clock with the mechanical bears that marched out and played drums every hour. “You said yourself that the reason we have all this is because my father is valuable to the city. So why not make ourselves valuable, too?”

  She tried to drive home the point. “Let’s say we do fight. Without our dragons, our chances of surviving a battle are nearly zero. So when we fail, and when the dragons end up finding Discovery, what do you think they’ll do to the families of the kids who attacked them? Your mother and father. Angus’s family, Simoni’s, Clyde’s.”

  “So you’re saying we just do everything the dragons want?”

  “I’m saying the people of Discovery are probably going to end up here one way or another. You have to ask yourself what will help them most. Us trying to fight? Or us trying to make ourselves valuable enough that they are treated the way we’d want them to be?”

  Trenton tapped his hands on his knees. She could see him turning the idea over in his head. “Let me ask you one question,” he said at last. “If your father was out there instead of in here, would you be saying the same thing?”

  She stuck her thumbnail in her mouth, chewing on the ragged edge. “I think so. But I don’t know for sure.”

  Trenton got up. “You’ve given me a lot to think about,” he said before going downstairs to join the others.

  Kallista looked at her thumbnail. She’d chewed it so far down it was starting to bleed. Everything she’d said made sense. It was completely logical. Without their dragons, their chances of escape were next to zero. And this house was much better than the dormitory. It was where she’d want her mother to be living, if her mother were still alive.

  So why did she feel like what she’d just done was every bit as wrong as what her father had done the night before?

  When Trenton came into the kitchen, the rest of the group was standing around the table, waiting for him.

  “So?” Angus asked. “Is she cracked?”

  Trenton scowled. “She made some good points. If we fight the dragons and fail, what happens to our families? You know, if the dragons capture them.”

  It had sounded more intelligent the way Kallista put it.

  “We should go for a ride,” Simoni said.

  Clearly, she wanted to leave the house to get him away from Kallista. Was that fair, though? Wasn’t Simoni the one who said they were in this together? Weren’t they were supposed to be a team?

  But she was already leading the others down the front hall. They walked out the front door and around the corner of the house.

  “Don’t we have to go to work?” Trenton asked.

  “No work.” Clyde grinned. “The letters said we get today off.”

  On the side of the house was what looked like a fancy shed, or maybe a place to keep horses. Simoni swung open the wide double doors, revealing a shiny quad.

  “Wow!” Trenton said, forgetting about his problems for a moment. “This is ours?” Ever since he’d seen the quads, he’d wanted to get a closer look at them. He poked his head under one side to see how the hydraulics worked.

  “You can take it apart later,” Simoni said, tugging his sleeve.

  “Fine,” Trenton said with a longing look at the vehicle’s complex drive mechanism. “I can’t wait to get my hands on the controls.”

  But Angus was already in the driver’s seat. “Hop in back and hold on,” he said. “Let’s see how fast this thing can go.”

  Trenton thought it was more likely they’d find out how hard it could crash.

  Plucky sat up front next to Angus, poking at the controls and wiggling the levers. The kitten looked around with wide blue eyes. “Never been on a ride before, have you, Allie?” she cooed.

  Trenton squeezed into the back between Clyde and Simoni.

  Angus pushed a button, and the engine cranked to life. It rattled and chopped, spitting out a cloud of coal-colored, dust-smelling smoke. “Something’s wrong with this thing!”

  Plucky fiddled with a couple of the controls, and the engine smoothed to a purr.

  Trenton leaned toward Simoni. “Something’s wrong with the driver.”

  Angus tugged a lever toward him, and the quad leaped backward, smashing into the wooden wall. “Oops.”

  “Try this way,” Plucky said. She pushed the lever forward, and the quad scuttled out the door like a giant metal insect.

  It turned out that the quad wasn’t really all that difficult to control once it got going. Even with no practice, Angus was able to pull out of the driveway and head down the middle of the street without running into anything else.

  “Kallista wants to give up,” Simoni said as they drove over the hill and down the other side.

  “It’s not giving up,” Trenton said. “We have to think about the future. Is this a battle we can win?”

  “Your father worked in the mines for years. If he was here, would he tell you to fight the dragons or quit?”

  Angus steered too far left, overcorrected, and went up on the sidewalk for a moment before clattering back into the street. “My old man wouldn’t take anything from no dragons, and neither will I. I’ll die before I bow down to those fire-breathers.”

  Trenton shook his head. “I’m not taking about bowing down to anyone or anything. Kallista was just—I mean, I was just thinking that if our families get captured, it would be better for them if the dragons thought we were valuable. You’ve seen my mom. Who’s going to take care of her if she gets stuck in one of those dormitories or sent to work on the farms?”

  Simoni tugged on a strand of hair. “Is that you talking, or Kallista?”

  Trenton shrugged. “It was her idea, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

  Clyde scratched his cheek. “Do we really know for sure that Discovery will be taken by the dragons? They’ve been attacked twice. I don’t think they’re going to be fooled that easily.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Plucky said. “Discovery ain’t no hole in the ground, like Seattle.”

  Simoni pushed back her hair. “It doesn’t matter if we’re in a big house or the dorms. As long as we’re forced to stay here, we might as well be locked in one of those barred rooms on Alcatraz. It’s just a fancier cell. And what about the people here? We keep talking about protecting our own families, but don’t the people of San Francisco deserve the right to be free?”

  “It doesn’t seem like they want to be free,” Trenton said.

  “Or maybe they just don’t believe that freedom is possible.” Simoni set her jaw. “What do you think the Runt Patrol would say if you tell them we’re giving up after one failure?”

  Trenton didn’t have to think twice. He knew the answer. And he knew it was the right answer. “We have to find our dragons and fight.”

  Plucky petted her kitten, who seemed to be enjoying the jerky ride. “Rusty things could be anywhere in the city, couldn’t they?”

  “I don’t think so,” Simoni said. “Last night, in the warehouse, Kallista’s father let something slip that I don’t think he meant to. The first time he mentioned our dragons, he sa
id he’d had them moved. That could mean anywhere. But the second time he said they been moved back.”

  “Back?” Trenton repeated. “As in, back to the island?”

  “It’s the perfect place to keep them out of our reach,” Clyde said.

  Trenton looked across the bay. From where they were, Alcatraz looked so close. But he had no illusions any of them could swim so far.

  Angus pulled the quad to the side of the road, and they all the studied the scene below them. Along the docks below were twenty or thirty boats of all sizes, sailing in and out of the bay. Some were obviously fishing boats, their decks covered with nets and crates. Others looked like they were transporting cargo, and there were even a few barges covered with piles of inky-black coal.

  “We could snatch one of them boats,” Plucky said. “Get back to the island snip-snap.”

  “Good luck with that,” Angus said. “Look at the security around that place.”

  He was right. More than a dozen dragons soared above the bay, and he could see at least twenty towers dotting the coast. “They’re watching the water like hawks,” Trenton said.

  “And look at all the guards checking everyone going in or out of the docks,” Clyde said. “Obviously they’ve thought about this before.”

  Trenton shook his head. “The thing I don’t understand is why they even need to guard the city if everyone is so happy to be here.”

  “Maybe they aren’t all as happy as they seem,” Simoni said. She tapped her finger to her lower lip. “Do you think we could build a boat ourselves and sneak across to the island at night?”

  Angus shaded his eyes with one hand. “Those look like spotlights on the towers.”

  “Wasn’t no spotlights the night we come in on the balloon, yeah, yeah?”

  “That’s because it was a trap,” Simoni said. “They made it easy on purpose.”

  “We’d never make it to the island without being spotted,” Trenton said. “Anything moving across the water would be obvious.” The thought triggered a memory. Back in Seattle, when he’d been working on the machines for Cochrane, he’d studied some books on warships. He’d never had time to build one of his own, but he remembered seeing a picture in one of the books.